The Educational Status of Asian Americans: An Update from the 1980 Census.

Kan, Stephen H.; Liu, William T.

Using 1980 Census data, a general profile of the educational attainment of six Asian American groups is given here. Data are compared with similar information on Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics, and racial/ethnic differences in the proportion of families with school-age children at the poverty level are described. The six Asian American groups considered are Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Filipinos, Koreans, and Indians. For 1980, all these except the Vietnamese exceeded Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics in the proportion of the population with a college education; the Vietnamese compared favorably with Blacks and Hispanics. Yet several Asian groups still had substantial proportions with no education or with minimum education (of all, Hispanics had the highest proportion in this category). Asian Americans had the greatest increase in overall educational level during the 1970s, a significant part of this increase being attributable to selective immigration. A much higher proportion of Asian Americans had occupation-education mismatches. And finally, perhaps the most significant finding was that, except for the Japanese, Asian Americans had higher proportions of families with school-age children in the poverty class as compared to Whites. Overall, the superior school achievement of Asian Americans is not associated with their economic milieus. (CMG)